I’m curious to know your thoughts on Yuma x Tori.
Honestly I'm not the biggest fan of this ship. It just seems a bit forced on the viewers, if you know what I mean. There would be important duels and in the middle it would cut to JUST Tori calling Yuma's name and it was like... TOO obvious she liked him. And it honestly got kind of annoying at times too. Plus, I think they didn't handle Tori as a character super well too; as she was literally added into scenarios she didn't need to be in, and her crush was just completely one sided and established too early in the serious and too obviously to mark out as "Here is the Love Interest TM".
Also her dynamic with Yuma suits a more sibling relationship too, because a lot of the time she does act like a sister and he definitely seems to have more of a brotherly behaviour to her. You could argue that Yuya and Zuzu have the same thing, but the difference is that their relationship was a genuine part of the plot, from what I've seen anyway, and it sort of grew mutually in a sense. With Tori and Yuma there isn't much growth, and Tori just has a crush on Yuma but also acts like a sister to him.
It's a bit like how I don't like Jaden and Alexis as a ship. Jaden's an idiot who didn't even know what a FIANCE was. As a HIGH SCHOOLER. Alexis is intelligent and has more Big Sister vibes, her crushing on Jaden feels off in a way. Tori and Yuma are a bit like that. With Yusei and Akiza the two, especially Yusei, just cared about each other in such a sweet way, especially in season 1, and the romance aspect wasn't immediately established and Akiza's crush was only hinted at a bit, and honestly that makes it sweeter in my opinion, where they grow closer as friends and then slowly fall in love, because then it's like real in a way, and so I geniunely ship them (also the two never date they just get married at once ok i refuse any other interpretation)
On the other hand I can totally get why Yuma and Tori can be seen as a cute couple because they do have some geniunely cute moments, and I could lowkey see Yuma and Tori together but like years and years later. Right now, though, they're more like friends and psuedo-siblings to me. I think that if they just started out without romance from Tori and the two just grew closer over the series and THEN Tori starts loving Yuma I feel like I would have liked the ship more.
The one thing I will ALWAYS give Tori props for was that as soon as she confessed she IMMEDIATELY went "let's go help Astral". In the sub she says something like "lets get back what's most important to you". And I love that she ACKNOWLEDGED that she herself isn't Yuma's priority. Astral is and always will be Yuma's priority, Astral is the one Yuma cares about the most (whether it's platonically or not I'll let you decide what you like :) ). And she was HAPPY to do it. She wasn't even bittersweet about it, the entire scene she was just so happy and excited because Yuma was finally truly happy again, and I just love that about her, that she was happy if Yuma was happy even if it's not what she wants for herself. That's genuine love right there.
So tl/dr: it has the potential to be cute but the show's execution was way too obvious and unnecessary but the ending of it was cute and maybe i'd ship their future selves. They needed more growth and heartfelt moments to make me want to ship it and less of random zoom ins on Tori crying Yuma's name in duels (there were other people who were supposed to care for Yuma too right there!)
